


The Queens Sacrifice

by mountain_born



Series: The Marvelous Tale of an Agent, an Archer, and an Assassin [49]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Doctor Who/Avengers Crossover Fusion, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-29 04:42:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17801255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mountain_born/pseuds/mountain_born
Summary: Before she was River Song, Agent of SHIELD, she was Melody Pond, the weapon of the Silence.  She was raised and trained for one purpose:  To kill the Doctor before he can ever reach Trenzalore.  For nearly seven decades Melody never questioned her mission.  Until an incident in Queens, New York in the year 2000 changes the course of her life for good.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My first order of business, as always, is to give a shout-out to my unparalleled beta **like-a-raven**. Not only does she catch my typos and correct my grammar, she keeps my plots from wandering off into the weeds and makes sure my characters stay consistent, down to the phrases they might use. She also never (in my hearing) runs screaming when I send her a 42 page rough draft full of time-travel-y headaches. It is not an exaggeration to say that I couldn’t write this series without her.
> 
> Writing this fic was an experience. The dubious joy of going back and picking up a story that has been referenced in several established fics is that you find yourself painted into some odd corners. But it’s finally done! Any errors and lapses in logic at this point are thoroughly my own.
> 
> This story is complete and will be posted in four chapters, one chapter per day. It very, very loosely follows the plot of the Doctor Who episode _Let’s Kill Hitler._
> 
> Thank you for stopping by and happy reading!

_November 22, 2012_   
_Thanksgiving Day_   
_Stark Mansion, Long Island_

“I really hope three turkeys will be enough,” Valerie said.

Phil looked around the huge kitchen. There were pots and pans simmering on the commercial stove. The central workspace was covered with dishes in various states of preparation. There was still more food stored in the refrigerator; Phil knew because he had been the one to fill it early this morning.

“I think we’ll be fine, Val. It’s only about a dozen people.”

Valerie closed the oven door and turned, fanning her face with her potholder. The heat had made her hair curl around her face and turned her cheeks pink. She wore an apron that said, “Hot Stuff Coming Through,” a gag gift from Tony. Phil put down the block of cheese he was grating, quickly raised his phone, and took a picture. Valerie rolled her eyes. 

“Yeah, but two of those people are Steve and Thor, and they can eat like my brothers and nephews combined,” she said. “So, a turkey for Steve, a turkey for Thor, and a turkey for everyone else.”

Phil still thought three large turkeys was excessive, but then this was Valerie’s area of expertise, not his. Worst case scenario, there would be a lot of leftovers for people to take home.

Phil and Valerie had originally planned on a small Thanksgiving together, their first as a solid, official, above-board couple. It was just going to be the two of them and Clint and River. But somehow word had gotten out, people had started getting added to the guest list, and it had turned into an _Island of Misfit Toys_ sort of holiday. Phil hadn’t minded in the slightest, but he had pointed out that they’d need a space that was bigger than his Brooklyn apartment. Tony had come to the rescue by stepping in with an offer to open Stark Mansion.

“I’ve sort of been thinking about doing it anyway,” Tony had said, “since it’s close to SHIELD HQ and all. I mean, I ought to do _something_ with it. No one but the housekeeping service has been there for, like, the last twenty years. So we’ll open it up for Thanksgiving. The place could use some good energy or vibes or whatever.”

Phil had never given it much thought before, but it made sense. Stark Mansion on Long Island was the last place Tony Stark had seen his parents alive. Howard and Maria Stark had died in a car wreck _en route_ from the mansion to the airport in December of 1991. This must have been where Tony had gotten the news. No wonder he had shuttered the place and never looked back.

Today the house was making up for two decades of desertion. The atmosphere was loud and chaotic, just like any other big family holiday. Phil had mostly been hanging out with Valerie, who had taken over the kitchen as soon as they’d arrived. The others had been regularly cycling in and out, helping with prep work and clean up. There was no rhyme or reason or schedule to it. Banner had been peeling potatoes up until five minutes earlier when Tony had summoned him for something. Now River and Clint appeared.

“What’s going on out there?” Phil asked.

“Stark’s teaching Thor about football,” Clint said, going to the sink to tackle some of the dishes. “We’re escaping.”

“ _American_ football, not proper football,” River added, pushing up the sleeves of her red sweater and taking over Bruce’s pan of potatoes.

“Are we talking about _televised_ football or. . .?”

“Nope. Stark sent Happy out to buy a ball,” Clint said.

“Oh, God.” Thor learning to tackle people? That had _broken bones_ written all over it. “Well, at least we’re only thirty miles from the SHIELD infirmary.”

“No major injuries until after dinner, please,” Valerie said, coming to help River with the potatoes. 

Movement outside of the kitchen windows caught Phil’s attention. Sure enough, a group of people was assembling in the backyard. Steve, Thor, Bruce, Fury, Hill, and Pepper clustered around Tony as he talked and threw a football in the air. Phil also saw the tiny figure of Meg Downing in a neatly belted wool coat, her hands folded on the handle of her cane. It looked like she had been designated the referee. Well, the former Director of SHIELD and Tony’s honorary aunt should be able to keep things under control.

Tony must have caught sight of Clint through the windows because Phil heard, “Hey, Barton! Get your ass out here!” Clint just smiled, raised a soapy hand, and flipped him off. Valerie laughed.

“So, Amy, Rory, and the Doctor are coming?” Valerie asked River.

“They said they would,” River said. “I’m not sure when they’ll get here. The Doctor wanted to take them on a short trip before they came over. Getting them back on the horse as it were.”

“Where are they going?” Phil asked curiously.

“I don’t know,” River said. “Some place fairly tame, though. After Demons Run, the Doctor wants to ease them back into traveling. Nothing dangerous. Nothing dramatic.”

“Is there such a trip with the Doctor?” Phil asked. “Even when he has a quiet day in mind, something usually blows up.”

“Well, I’m sure he’ll do his best.”

*****

_June 4, 2000_  
 _Queens, New York_

Melody Pond stood at the window of her hotel room looking out over the city. It was a beautiful spring Sunday, and in another life it would probably have made her very happy.

In her first life, as a little girl in Scotland, on a day like this she, Aunt Elizabeth, and Uncle Robert would have skived off going to church. They would have taken a picnic down to the beach and spent the day exploring tidepools and wading in the cold Atlantic Ocean. In her second life, as Melody Pond the Oxford student, she and her friends would have biked though The Parks, then spent the afternoon lounging on the grass laughing and critiquing the young men playing cricket. In her third life as a lieutenant in the Dianian Army, sometimes days like this had brought a break in the planet-side fighting. If they were fortunate she and members of her unit could have spent some time napping under the three daytime moons.

Those days were all long past. Robert and Elizabeth were dead. Melody had no friends or comrades-in-arms any more. She was alone. She preferred it that way.

Melody pulled the curtain back across the window. The weather was irrelevant save for how it might affect her mission today. She sat down on one of the room’s two queen beds where she had methodically laid out one gun, three knives, a specially-designed wallet containing six small syringes of potent poisons, and a file. Melody picked up her mission dossier to go over it one more time, though she had already committed her target’s details to memory.

Margaret “Meg” Downing. Age: eighty-one. Native of Toronto, Canada, but had spent the better portion of her life in New York. Founding member and former Director of an espionage agency known as SHIELD. Retired for five years, but still important enough that someone out there was willing to pay very well to have her killed. She was also important enough to still warrant a protection detail from her former agency. Downing’s retirement home in Toronto was fortified enough to make it an undesirable place to carry out the hit. 

Downing was in New York City for a few days, though. She had come down for the Stark Millennium Expo in Queens. According to Melody’s intel, Downing would be in the open and security would be minimal. 

Melody had no idea who wanted Downing dead or why. This job had come across her radar last month and the approach had been through a third party; not unusual on the freelance assassin market. Melody’s clients valued their anonymity. The job paid well and would be a challenge. Moreover, it would fill the time. If there was one thing Melody Pond had in abundance, it was time to fill.

She set the dossier aside and padded into the bathroom. She stood before the mirror, studying her reflection. Melody deliberately curved her mouth into a smile, practicing. Expressing emotion hadn’t come naturally to her in years. Most of the time it didn’t matter, but today she would be out and about among multitudes of enthusiastic people. She would have to fake it if she didn’t want to stick out. 

A buzzing sensation suddenly pulsed through Melody’s right hand, distracting her. She glanced down at the plain metal ring around her middle finger. The buzzing persisted and Melody pulled the ring off. It had been over a month since she last been in contact with the Silence. Madame Kovarian was checking up on her. Melody pressed the ring to the corner of the mirror where it stuck like a magnet. The glass surface flickered as it converted to a communications screen and Kovarian’s face appeared. 

“Melody,” Madame Kovarian said brightly (or what passed for brightly coming from Kovarian). “It’s good to see you, child.”

“Madame Kovarian.” Melody didn’t return the sentiment. She waited in silence for Kovarian to get to the reason for her call.

Kovarian’s smile became a bit strained. Sixteen years ago, when Melody had last regenerated, Kovarian had been very pleased with the outcome. The fourth incarnation of Melody Pond was cold, detached, ruthless. She was a perfect killer, the culmination of all the training the Silence had poured into her. 

After a few years, though, it seemed that Kovarian started to find Melody’s new personality trying. It would be a stretch to say that Melody took pleasure in that, but it was oddly satisfying.

“It’s your birthday today,” Madame Kovarian said. “Many happy returns.”

Melody remained silent.

“I see you’re in New York City,” Madame Kovarian finally continued. “What are you doing there?”

“I have a job,” Melody replied. 

“I see. Well, I wish you good luck. I’m sure you’ll perform brilliantly, as always.”

Madame Kovarian knew that Melody took jobs outside of the Silence. If she had any objections to it, she’d never voiced them. Melody’s freelance work kept her busy and kept her skills honed. It was better than mindlessly training until the Doctor showed up.

_If_ the Doctor ever showed up. No matter what the Silence said about her destiny, Melody had her doubts that he ever would. 

“When you’re finished, you should come to us,” Madame Kovarian said. “It’s been some time since we had a face-to-face visit.”

“If you wish,” Melody said. “Will that be all?”

She thought she saw Kovarain stifle a sigh. “Yes. We’ll see you soon, Melody.” 

The communication ended. The mirror returned to a simple glass surface reflecting Melody’s own face back to her. She pulled the ring off the mirror, put it back on her finger, and reached for her clothes. It was time to start the clock on this mission.

*****

“Having fun, Aunt Meg?” Tony Stark asked.

The VIP lounge was full of mingling journalists, local celebrities, and captains of industry. The brunch spread was laid out along the far wall and the bank of windows looked out over Flushing Meadow Park. Tony’s guest of honor was sitting in the middle of it all with a mimosa and a plate of crepes. And unless Tony’s eyes had been deceiving him, up until a minute ago she’d had the latest hot Broadway leading man hanging on her every word. 

That was Aunt Meg for you. The woman had spent her whole life in espionage. She could charm the pants (figuratively and probably literally, though Tony preferred not to think on that too long) off anyone.

“I am, Anthony. Thank you.” Aunt Meg gave him a shrewd look as Tony took a seat at the small table. “Though not as much fun as you had last night, I expect.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“It’s ten-thirty in the morning and you’re wearing sunglasses indoors.”

There was, of course, an annoying downside to your honorary aunt having spent a lifetime in espionage.

“It was a late night. I had the opening ceremony and then I was up giving an interview until almost dawn,” Tony protested. He knew it was futile, but this was the dance. 

“Mmm. Did you at least get her name?”

“Bethany.” When in doubt, speak decisively. 

Aunt Meg rolled her eyes and passed him her plate and fork. “Eat something. You look awful.”

Tony took a big bite just as Happy appeared.

“Boss, _Vanity Fair’s_ bugging me again about the interview. Is after the thing with _Wired_ okay?”

Tony’s mouth was full, so he just nodded and gave Happy a quick thumb’s up. Happy looked at the plate, looked at Aunt Meg, and said, “Ms. Downing, can I bring you some more crepes?”

“No thank you, Harold. I’m fine,” Aunt Meg replied. Happy nodded and returned to circling the room.

“You know, he never offers to bring _me_ crepes,” Tony said.

“Why is Harold handling your interview appointments?” Aunt Meg asked. “Shouldn’t your personal assistant be doing that?” 

“She quit.”

“Another one? Anthony.”

“It’s a stressful work environment.”

“You need a personal assistant,” Aunt Meg said. “A good one. Possibly one with either a background in preschool education or combat experience.”

“You’re hilarious, Aunt Meg. I had the company send over some files. There’s one that looks promising. Redhead. Her name’s Pitts, I think? I’ll have HR interview her and send her up the chain if they think she’s good. Anyway, speaking of assistants, where’s your entourage?”

“Entourage? You make me sound like some sort of pop star.”

“You know what I mean,” Tony said, watching Aunt Meg sip her mimosa. “The agents in suits who always hover in the background whenever you hit the town.”

She thought he’d never noticed? Oh, he’d noticed. Aunt Meg had had personal security for as far back as Tony could remember.

“I didn’t bring them along,” Aunt Meg said. “I didn’t think they were necessary for the Expo. You have your own security here.”

“Well, yeah.”

The fairgrounds had security guards for dealing with things like disorderly conduct and lost kids. Stark Industries had its own security team on site to guard the high-level, experimental tech on exhibit. It wasn’t exactly the SHIELD bodyguard detail, but it was probably more than adequate. Frankly, Tony thought Aunt Meg’s security was a little overblown these days. If someone wanted to assassinate her, they would have done it a long time ago.

“So, I apparently have to give some interviews and talk to some important people,” Tony said. “Do you want to tag along?”

“And hamper your style? No, that’s all right,” Aunt Meg replied. “I thought I’d wander around the Expo for a while. I’ll meet up with you later.”

“On your own? Want me to send Happy with you?”

“Goodness, no. I can look after myself.” Aunt Meg raised an eyebrow at him. “Really, how much trouble could an old lady like me possibly get into?”

“I don’t know. Dad told some stories.”

Aunt Meg smiled and stood up, gathering her cane and purse. “I’ll behave. Get to work, Anthony. I’ll see you later.”

She leaned down, kissed him on the cheek, and set off through the crowd, a tiny figure in a neatly tailored suit. Tony shook his head and went to go find Happy to see what the itinerary was. 

Aunt Meg was right. He really did need to hire an assistant.

*****

“Welcome,” the Doctor said, opening the TARDIS doors with a flourish, “to the Stark Millenium Expo!”

Amy peeked out around the Doctor. “It looks like a basement,” she said.

The big room was lit only by dim safety lights along the walls. There were stacks of crates scattered around it. The walls were painted cinderblock and the concrete floor was free of dirt and clutter. It all felt very clean and industrial, a lot like. . .

Amy shook her head, shoving back memories of Demons Run.

“Well, yes,” the Doctor said, either not noticing or not commenting on her small flashback. “The fairground is above us. We’re just using this as a parking garage.”

“Is that so Tony won’t see the TARDIS a dozen years before he’s supposed to and accidentally create a paradox or something?” Rory asked as they followed the Doctor out of the TARDIS.

“I keep telling you that paradoxes—dangerous ones, anyway—aren’t that easy to create,” the Doctor replied. “That said, the man is incorrigibly curious, which is a quality that I admire, but. . .yes, it’s best if he doesn’t see the TARDIS a dozen years before he’s supposed to.” The Doctor fished a key out of his pocket and locked the TARDIS’s door. “It’s a fair bet that the man whose name is on the marquee isn’t going to venture down here.”

“We should tell him over dinner later that we were here. Watch his mind blow,” Amy said. 

The plan for today was simple, as plans with the Doctor went. They were taking a nice, safe, sedate trip. The Doctor had picked the destination, and if he deemed post-90s Queens to fit the bill, then Amy wasn’t going to argue. After a day at the Expo, they’d pop back to their present and over to Long Island to celebrate American Thanksgiving with River, Clint, Phil and the others. 

Amy hadn’t been able to help feeling a little thrill of excitement and happiness when she’d stepped aboard the TARDIS again. Then she’d immediately felt guilty. Her baby was gone. How could she blithely go off traveling again like nothing had happened?

_Your baby isn’t gone. She’s fine. River said so herself,_ Amy reminded herself firmly. _You’ll see her in a few hours. She’s probably busy making stuffing or something._

“Amy? Are you okay?” Rory asked.

“Yeah. Sure,” Amy replied. “I was just thinking that we ought to take Tony a Stark Expo souvenir. Something with the name and date on it.”

“We should do that,” Rory agreed. He smiled over at Amy. “We should take back something for River, too.”

Amy returned the smile. Of course, Rory knew exactly where her head had gone. Was it any wonder she loved the man?

“Ponds! Come along!” The Doctor was standing in a doorway leading to a more brightly-lit area. “There’s a lift up this way.”

Amy threaded her arm through her husband’s. “You heard him. Let’s be off to the fair.”

*****

Large open areas full of people, like the Stark Expo, were not Melody’s preferred hunting grounds. Not in this regeneration, anyway.

That hadn’t always been the case. In her second incarnation, as Melody Pond the Oxford graduate and sometime government secretary, she’d enjoyed bustling streets and crowded dance floors. She could charm information out of dignitaries at embassy balls or carry out a smooth assassination at a large house party with equal ease. She’d enjoyed the energy that came with being in the company of other people.

Now, in her fourth go-‘round as Melody Pond, she vastly preferred solitude and shadows. Whenever possible, she carried out her work alone and unseen. This? Melody glanced around the teeming fairground under the guise of stopping to read a kiosk map. This was trying.

It was tempting to just cut through it all, the crowds and the people. Melody had a short list of the places Downing was most likely to be today. But going straight in after her target and out again in this environment could attract notice. It would be unprofessional. And if Melody Pond could be said to pride herself on anything, it was on being a consummate professional. So, she’d be patient. She’d circle slowly, close in, and wait for the right moment to strike. That meant that for today Melody had to blend in.

She adjusted the strap of her purse, practiced her smile on a trio of small children walking by with their parents, and moved on. She strolled down the walkway to her right and into one of the exhibit halls. 

She found herself looking at the history of Stark Industries. Something about the turn of the millennium made people want to revisit the past, it seemed. Melody worked her way into the flow of foot traffic and pretended to the be interested in the blown-up black-and-white pictures of Howard Stark and the earliest days of the company.

“Wow, Tony really looks like him, doesn’t he?” 

There was nothing at all special about the words; it was the strong highland Scots accent that caught Melody’s attention and made her involuntarily glance around. Only long decades of training kept her from betraying a reaction.

Her mother and father were standing no more than ten feet away from her. 

Melody Pond had two photographs tucked away in a safe deposit box in Glasgow. She hadn’t looked at them in ages, not since before her last regeneration. But she remembered every single detail about them. Those photos had been her first—indeed her only—introduction to her parents, Amy Pond and Rory Williams. The Silence had supplied them for her, and Aunt Elizabeth had given them to her once she was old enough to be responsible with them. Melody had spent her childhood studying the pictures of the parents the Doctor had stolen from her.

_“Why did they leave me?” Melody often asked Aunt Elizabeth when she was very young and just beginning to learn that she was different from the other little girls in the village._

_Aunt Elizabeth always answered the same way. “Because the Doctor forced them to. I’m sure they didn’t want to, but the Doctor is cruel and selfish and wants them all to himself. He’ll keep them as his playthings as long as they amuse him.”_

_Melody had already learned to feel a little fissure of fear at the word_ Doctor. _“Will he hurt them?”_

_“No, sweetheart. Because you’re going to help them. You’re the only one who can kill the Doctor, and when you do, they’ll be free and you can all be together.”_

Now, here they were. Amy Pond and Rory Williams, standing side-by-side looking at a picture of Howard Stark taken during the World’s Fair in 1939. They seemed oblivious to Melody’s stare, and she quickly averted her eyes and dropped her alert stance before they noticed her. As they wandered on, she fell in behind them, keeping them in sight under the guise of looking at the exhibits.

They certainly didn’t look enslaved or cowed or ill-used. In fact, they looked like they were having a good time. Melody wasn’t sure how to quantify that, but there were a number of explanations that could account for it. Brainwashing. Mind control. One thing was for certain; if Amy and Rory were here, the Doctor must not be far away.

All thoughts of her contract on Meg Downing were shunted to the side. The job didn’t matter. Even Amy and Rory didn’t matter that much save for the fact that they could lead her to the Doctor. Once they did, at long last, she could complete her mission.

_And then what?_ a small voice in the back of her mind asked. But Melody shut it away and concentrated on the situation unfolding in front of her.

She would have known the Doctor even if he hadn’t come walking right up to Amy and Rory. Melody had been thoroughly educated on all his faces. She felt the tips of her fingers tingle, eager to draw one of her weapons, but she checked the impulse. The Doctor couldn’t be killed by a simple bullet or blade. It would require more skill and finesse. There were too many people here, too many opportunities for interference. 

She was too far away to hear what the Doctor, Amy, and Rory were saying to each other. They began to move on together as a trio. Melody started to follow, but then had a better idea.

She could trail around after the Doctor all day and hope for an opening, but Melody didn’t like the odds of that plan. If the Doctor slipped through her fingers now, how long would it be before she found him again? In sixty-eight years, this was the first time she’d sighted him on the ground. 

But if the Doctor was here, the TARDIS would be close by and sooner or later he’d have to return to it. It was likely to be in a spot that was out of the way, but easily accessible. It would be child’s play to locate it. Melody had been taught how to track the TARDIS, too. All she had to do was find it and wait.


	2. Chapter 2

_June 4, 2000_   
_Queens, New York_

It had to be some kind of record, Rory thought. They had been at the Stark Expo for three hours and nothing bad or creepy or even slightly mysterious had happened. No space ships, no unearthly beings, no life-or-death battles. Even the weather was uncomplicated and beautiful. Yeah, the Doctor had promised a quiet-bordering-on-boring trip, but the universe didn’t always play along with the Doctor’s good intentions. So, an uneventful three hours wandering around a fair was kind of a cause for celebration.

Rory would never say so aloud, though. It wasn’t that he believed in jinxes, but really, why tempt fate? 

“This is really good pizza,” he said instead. 

They had paused for a snack at the Manfredi’s Pizza booth and managed to find three spaces at the crowded outdoor tables. Manfredi’s was doing brisk business today.

“This is that restaurant that River and Clint said was founded by gangsters, isn’t it?” Amy said, reaching for her soda.

“Gangsters, but SHIELD allies,” the Doctor said. “It certainly can’t be said that Director Downing lacked imagination. She’s really rather singular as humans go.”

“Listen to you. You sound like you have a crush,” Amy teased.

The Doctor opened his mouth to deliver what looked like was going to be a sarcastic comeback, but something distracted him and he started fumbling at the inner pockets of his jacket instead.

“What is it?” Rory asked. “A call?”

“It would seem so, yes, but not on my phone.” The Doctor pulled out the thin black wallet that held his psychic paper. He flipped it open and frowned. “We need to go back and check on the TARDIS.”

“Why?” Amy asked.

The Doctor wordlessly passed the psychic paper to her as he pushed up from the table. Rory leaned over to read it as well. 

The message was written in perfect copperplate cursive handwriting: _Doctor, go back and check on your TARDIS. X._

Huh.

“Wait, people can contact you on the psychic paper?” Amy asked as they edged through the narrow spaces between the picnic tables crowded with people. 

“Yes. Well, some people. Not many,” the Doctor said. “The list is pretty select.”

“So, who sent this message?” Rory asked.

“I haven’t the foggiest.”

Rory ducked around a couple of teenagers carrying three boxes of pizza apiece and breathed a sigh of relief as they broke free of the packed outdoor dining area. “How can you not know who sent it?”

“It’s signed with an _X,_ ” the Doctor said with a shrug, “and I didn’t recognize the handwriting.”

“But you said it was a select list,” Amy said. “That means there can’t be that many people to choose from.”

“Well, yes, but the paper can pick up messages from all over Time and Space. It could be from someone I haven’t met yet.”

Rory sighed. “I’d almost forgotten how much fun these conversations are.”

“But how could. . .whoever it is. . .know that you need to check on the TARDIS right now?” Amy asked.

“The most obvious answer is that they know something that I don’t,” the Doctor replied. “Future knowledge, maybe. Though I suppose they could be here in the present as well.”

“So, just to be clear,” Rory said, “we’re blindly walking into an unknown situation on the say-so of an unknown person who knows how to access your psychic paper?”

“That’s about the size of it,” the Doctor replied. “Eyes sharp, Centurion.”

Rory shook his head, but he could feel himself falling into battle stance without even meaning to. So much for their boring day.

*****

They were returning already. Melody could hear familiar voices coming up the tunnel. She had expected that the Doctor, Amy, and Rory would be gone for most of the day.

“I’m just saying, maybe you need caller ID,” Amy said.

“It really doesn’t work that way.”

Melody frowned and pressed herself a little further back into her shadowy corner. She had found the TARDIS easily enough in the middle of a large storage area under the fairgrounds. She had taken time to map out the space. The storage area had two entrances: one that led into a bright, wide, well-trafficked tunnel and one that led to a narrower maintenance passage. Melody had staked out a spot near the former to work out her plan of attack. 

Melody had spent a great deal of her life studying ways to kill a Time Lord, and most of those ways required something more than conventional Earth weaponry. It _could_ be done. Dismemberment was an option, if she could sever the head and destroy the brain stem quickly enough. But that wouldn’t be easy if Amy and Rory were under the Doctor’s control. They would try to save him; she’d have to fight them off.

The strategic thing to do would be to kill them as well, but some deeply-rooted instinct still in Melody balked at that thought. That went against her core training. The goal was to free Amy and Rory. Once the Doctor was dead his hold over them should end. 

Her best shot was poison. One in her collection, an extract from the Judas Tree, would do the job handily enough. It wouldn’t be instantaneous, but it was foolproof. The poison inhibited regeneration. She just had to get close enough to administer it. Melody had thought she’d have a little longer to work out a plan, but she’d been trained to think on her feet.

She liberated the syringe she needed and then quickly began to remove her concealed gun and knives. She was distracted for half a second by a soft sound coming from the deep shadows at the other end of the large chamber. Melody froze for a moment, squinting into the darkness, but didn’t see anything, nor could she hear anything else. _Probably a rat,_ she thought. She didn’t have time to dally. The Doctor, Amy, and Rory were getting closer.

Melody stashed the remaining poisons, her gun and two of her knives in a crevice between two crates. She unsheathed the third knife and, being careful to avoid any major blood vessels, stabbed it into her left bicep. The blade was very sharp, cutting easily through the fabric of her shirt. She dragged the knife down to her elbow, leaving a shallow, ragged cut. Blood immediately soaked her sleeve. It was a lucky thing she’d worn a white shirt today. It would make the effect more dramatic.

It hurt, but not enough to impair her, and the damage would heal cleanly enough. It would do. Melody stuffed the knife into the crevice with the others, clamped her hand on her bleeding arm, and staggered out of the darkness.

*****

Amy and Rory (mostly Rory) sometimes accused the Doctor of walking blithely into danger. The Doctor objected to the use of the word _blithely._ There was nothing blithe about it. He just did it so often that he couldn’t be bothered with apprehension most of the time.

In this instance, they didn’t even know if there was danger to walk into. Sure, the setting was atmospheric enough, as their footsteps echoed through the tunnels under the fairgrounds. And it was a delightfully curious situation to be sure. It certainly wasn’t every day that he got a mysterious message on his psychic paper from person or persons unknown. The Doctor was actually quite looking forward to seeing what awaited them at the TARDIS.

At least he was until a woman covered in blood stumbled out of the chamber where he’d parked it, directly into their path.

“Oh, my God,” Amy said.

“Help me.” The woman caught herself against the tunnel wall with a bloody hand. “Please, help me.”

Rory reached her first, which was just as well since he was the only one of the three of them with any actual medical expertise. “Easy. We’ve got you.”

“What happened?” Amy asked, quickly wrapping one arm around the woman’s waist to support her.

“I don’t know.” The woman shook her head. “I was taking a shortcut through the tunnels and a man just jumped out of nowhere. He had a knife.”

The Doctor drew his sonic and stepped into the doorway she had emerged from, peering back the way the woman had come. In the dim light, he could just see the roof of the TARDIS peeking over the piles of crates and boxes, but there was no sign of a madman with a knife. There was also no sign of anything or anyone else. A quick scan with the sonic screwdriver revealed nothing that might account for the message on his psychic paper. 

The Doctor turned back to the others. The woman was now sitting in the floor between Amy and Rory. The Doctor’s brain quickly zipped from point to point as he looked her over. She was probably about the same age as his companions. She had dark hair, cut to her chin, and wide grey eyes that at the moment were rather damp. She was dressed for a spring day in a white shirt and flowered skirt, which were now liberally bloodstained. She didn’t appear to be a fairground employee.

_Now why would you be taking a shortcut through the tunnels?_

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask. Instead the Doctor pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to Rory.

“Here. It’s clean.” Rory accepted it with a nod and pressed the cloth to the wound on the woman’s arm. 

“What should we do? Should we call Security? The police?” Amy asked.

“The person who attacked you. Are you sure it was a man?” the Doctor asked. “It wasn’t perhaps an alien? A monster of some kind?”

The woman just gave him a confused look. “A what?”

“I think we should all get inside the TARDIS,” Rory said. “Just in case whatever attacked her is what your anonymous friend was warning us about. It’s okay,” he added to the woman. “We have a safe place close by. Nothing will be able to get to us in there, and we’ll get your arm taken care off. All right?”

The Doctor was a hairsbreadth away from objecting. Something about this whole situation wasn’t right. But the woman was bleeding and pale and clearly in pain. And for her to have been attacked in the vicinity of the TARDIS when a message had just come through on the psychic paper with a warning about the TARDIS? Well, suffice to say that whatever was happening was probably beyond a team of human security guards. 

“All right. But let’s proceed with caution,” the Doctor said. “And stick close together. Safety in numbers.”

*****

She needed to get close to the Doctor to administer the poison.

 _All in good time,_ Melody reminded herself. The Time Lord was on high alert right now, leading the way through the dark chamber, watching out for whatever person or thing that had “attacked” her. Now was not the time to try to jump him. Once they boarded the TARDIS the Doctor’s guard would slip. He would assume that they were safe. Then Melody would choose her moment and strike.

For now she was being closely escorted by Amy and Rory. They were walking on either side of her; Amy had one hand resting on her back in a manner that seemed meant to be comforting. It was strange, being in such close proximity to her parents after decades of knowing them only through photographs and the Silence’s stories. Melody thought she ought to be feeling something profound at this moment, but all she felt was mild discomfit and impatience to finish her mission.

“What’s your name?” Amy asked.

The question almost caught Melody off guard. “Julia.”

“I’m Amy and that’s Rory,” Amy said. She was smiling. She seemed to be trying to put Melody at ease. “And that. . .” Amy’s eyes went to the Doctor, walking a few feet ahead. “. . .is a long story. How’s your arm?”

If she was being herself at the moment, Melody would have shrugged off the question, as physical discomfort was of little consequence. A regular human fairgoer would not be so stoic. She would be in pain and scared of running across her attacker again. It was mentally exhausting, pretending to be a regular human.

“It really hurts.” Melody made a show of favoring her injured arm. She added a sight quaver to her voice for effect.

The Doctor half-turned and opened his mouth to say something. Whatever he had to say, though, was lost as someone opened fire on them.

*****

Amy didn’t remember ducking for cover when the shooting started. She thought that Rory might have pushed her when the first bullet pinged off one of the overhead pipes. There were four more loud bangs accompanied by flashes of light, then silence. Amy thought she could hear footsteps quickly retreating in the distance.

“What the _hell?”_ she said as soon as she caught her breath again. “Rory?”

“I’m okay.” Rory was a few feet away, crouched low much as Amy was. As she watched, the Doctor cautiously raised himself up. 

“That’s quite enough of that,” the he said emphatically, aiming his sonic screwdriver at the ceiling. The low emergency lights blazed as bright as stage lights. But there was no one there. Whoever had shot at them was gone.

Amy breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever had just happened, they were okay.

No. Wait. They weren’t _all_ okay. 

“Oh, my God.”

*****

Melody was pretty sure the bullet had nicked her heart. She blinked at the ceiling, trying to breathe around the heavy weight that was starting to build in her chest. _Internal bleeding in the chest cavity, putting pressure on the lungs,_ she thought clinically. She pressed one hand to her abdomen just beneath her sternum and felt blood rapidly well through her fingers. Her vision was starting to go dark along the edges.

She was dying. Melody recognized the signs. She had done it before.

_No. No, not now. I’m so close._

She could hear the others shouting. They sounded panicked. Then the Doctor’s face appeared above her.

“Here now, it’s all right,” he said. Melody felt him press his hands over hers, trying to staunch the flow of blood. “Stay calm. We’re going to get you help. You’ll be fine.”

“I think you’re lying,” Melody said with some effort. 

Melody’s other hand strayed to her waist, to the band of her skirt, where the syringe of Judas Tree extract was concealed. The Doctor was right here. She’d never get a chance like this again.

If she was going to die, she could at least complete her mission before she went.

*****

Rory had gone running into the TARDIS to get a med-kit. The Doctor might have told him there was no need to rush. This woman was dying. The med-kit wouldn’t be enough to help. Emergency services would never get to them in time. Even trying to get her into the TARDIS and to a hospital would be a futile effort. She had minutes at best and moving her would only hasten the end.

So, while Amy stood watch over them in case the maniac who’d shot at them came back, the Doctor knelt on the concrete floor and kept up a steady steam of babble to keep her calm.

“Nothing to it. We’ll get you fixed right up,” he said. “Rory’s a very good nurse. He should be, really, with the things he’s seen. There was even a time when he helped deliver an entire litter of joax cubs. They—ouch!”

It felt almost like a bee sting; a quick sharp prick followed by a burning sensation that curled through his forearm. The Doctor jerked his arm back.

“What’s wrong?” Amy asked.

The Doctor glanced back at Amy, but a short, breathless laugh caused the Doctor to turn his eyes back to their patient. She was staring up at him, her mouth curved in something that seemed meant to pass for a smile.

“Have you figured it out yet?” she asked.

A cold chill ran down the Doctor’s spine. He’d heard those words from Madame Kovarian’s mouth not so long ago, in the aftermath of Demons Run. The woman’s hand dropped limply to her side and a small hypodermic dart rolled out of her hand.

“Don’t touch that!” the Doctor said sharply when Amy bent to pick it up. 

She immediately withdrew her hand. “Why? What is it?”

The Doctor paid no mind to her question, because something far more important was unfolding in front of him. He could hear running footsteps approaching from behind—Rory back with the med-kit. The Doctor staggered to his feet, grabbing Amy with one hand and Rory with the other and shoving them backward.

Rory struggled to get loose. “What are you doing? She’s dying.”

“No. She’s not. Look.”

The dying woman was climbing to her feet. She still had one hand clamped to the gunshot wound, but what was pouring out of it now was. . . _light._

The Doctor, Amy, and Rory all quickly retreated a few more feet. “Doctor, what’s happening?” Amy asked.

“She’s starting to regenerate,” the Doctor said.

*****

_I did it. It’s finally over._

Well, for a given definition of _over._ Melody stared down at her hands, almost mesmerized. The hazy golden light that accompanied regeneration was growing brighter and stronger. It wasn’t just coming out of her wound, it was rolling off her skin. Melody’s hands already looked like a pair of torches. 

But for her, for this incarnation of Melody Pond, it was over. She was dying. Melody could already feel her body starting to pull itself apart on a cellular level. And at last, right at the end, she had completed her mission. She looked up at the Doctor, Amy, and Rory, who were staring at her from a safe distance. For the first time in years, she felt something like happiness.

“The Silence will never fall. Not to you, Doctor.”

Then the flames swept through her body and her vision went white.

*****

Rory knew about regeneration, of course. He knew it was how the Time Lords lived through death. He knew how it worked, more or less. He knew that the Doctor had done it many times. Thanks to some Gallifreyan medical texts he’d found in the TARDIS’s library, he knew roughly what the process looked like.

He’d never imagined the screaming.

Amy gripped his hand tightly as the woman was engulfed in a pillar of gold light.

“Rory,” Amy said, “if she’s regenerating, then that means she has to be. . .”

Rory squeezed his wife’s hand. “I know.”

*****

_“I’ve met you once before. But this is your first time meeting me.”_

River had said those words to the Doctor the first time he’d met her. It had been April 2009 at SHIELD Headquarters, a chance meeting, or as chance as such things could be. That had been the beginning of a puzzle that had kept the Doctor engrossed for years. It had taken them through the Chitauri invasion, through the formation of the Avengers, through Demon’s Run. Now they were seeing the beginning from the other side.

This was where it began for River.

One of the blessings of regeneration was that it was usually a fast process. The fire blazed fiercely, the sound of it almost drowning out the screams of the woman—of Melody Pond—at the center of it. Then, almost abruptly, it stopped, leaving someone new in its wake.

It was River, if an adolescent version of the one the Doctor had come to know. To a human eye she would appear to be maybe twelve or thirteen years old. She was a little bit shorter than the adult River, her figure was flatter, and her face had a bit of childish roundness to it. Her hair, which had been short and dark a moment ago, had sprung out long, wavy, and golden brown. She stared down at her new hands and then raised her eyes to look at the Doctor, Amy, and Rory.

“It is,” Amy said. “It’s--”

“River,” the Doctor said. “River Song.”

*****

In one split second she died, and then she was reborn.

Her body was new, different, the wounds healed as if they’d never been there, which in a way was exactly the case. Her clothes fit strangely, a little too big now. Long hair now tickled the back of her neck. Her hands were a new shape, and the old scars that had marred the skin here and there were gone. Melody could feel her mind falling into place, new thought patterns forming, trying to process information.

This was the fourth time Melody had been through regeneration. None of those sensations were novel to her. What was different, this time, was the bombardment of emotion, of fear and exhilaration and shock that made her weave on her feet. 

She looked up from her hands and found the Doctor and her parents staring at her with mouths slightly agape. Melody wracked her brain, trying to determine what she should do. Should she fight? Should she run? Should she say something to them?

The others seemed to have as much of an idea of how to proceed as she did.

“It is,” Amy said. “It’s--”

“River,” the Doctor said, taking a step toward her. “River Song.”

That was the last thing Melody registered before she fainted.

*****

“It’s normal,” the Doctor said. “Regeneration is a huge shock to the system. A good deep nap is not an uncommon side effect.”

They had taken River into the TARDIS. Rory had carried River straight to the infirmary, but he’d had to defer to the Doctor to read the scans. Rory had no idea what he was looking for. According to the Doctor, River was all right, if “still cooking.”

They were gathered around the infirmary bed where River lay, still out cold. Periodically a wisp of vaporous gold light drifted up off her and evaporated into the air. The Doctor said that was normal, too. The regenerative energy stayed active for a little while after the change.

“What is she even doing here?” Amy asked, straightening the blanket she’d draped over River. “And why is someone out there trying to kill her?”

“River’s said that before SHIELD she worked freelance as a mercenary,” Rory said. “Maybe she’s here to steal some of Stark’s inventions. Maybe whoever attacked her is a rival or something.” He shrugged in the face of Amy’s and the Doctor’s stares. “I don’t know. I’m just taking stabs here.”

“Well, whyever and whoever, they’re not getting close to her again,” Amy said. “We’ll keep her safe.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. He was sitting in a chair he’d pulled up near the infirmary bed examining the plain metal ring they’d taken off River. He seemed uncharacteristically subdued, but then it was turning out to be rather an odd sort of day. “But remember, Amy, she’s not the River we know. This is River at the very start. She’s probably going to be very confused when she wakes up.”

“When do you think she will?” Rory asked.

“It’s hard to say. The universe rather broke the mold with River. I’d give her at least an hour,” the Doctor replied, tucking the ring into his pocket. “I’m going to head back up to the control room.”

“What? You’re not staying?” Amy said. 

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“Why?”

“Think about some of the things River’s told us about her past,” the Doctor said. “The Silence raised her to kill me. They’ve taught her that I’m a ruthless monster. Back in the hotel with the minotaur, when we were facing our worst fears, I was hers.” The Doctor smiled wryly. “I don’t think I should be the first thing she sees when she comes around. You two stay with her. If anything starts looking pear-shaped, call me.”

He was halfway to the doors when Rory caught up with him. “Doctor, wait.”

The Doctor paused looking back at him.

“What should we do?” Rory said. “When she wakes up, what should we do?”

The Doctor smiled and clapped a hand on Rory’s shoulder. “She’s your daughter, and she needs you. You’ll know what to do.”

The doors whisked closed behind the Doctor. Rory went back to join Amy at River’s bedside and settled in to wait.

*****

There was something inside her head. Melody could feel it wrapping itself around her consciousness. It was immense and ancient and terrifying. She struggled, trying to wrest her mind away from it. Unexpectedly, the presence eased back, and then Melody could feel that it wasn’t threatening at all. The presence was overjoyed.

 _My child is home._ The message didn’t come across in words so much as feelings and impressions. It also didn’t do much to alleviate Melody’s growing sense of panic.

_Who are you?_ she thought, but the question wasn’t really necessary. The answer had already been planted in her mind. The presence was the TARDIS.

Over the years, the Silence had speculated that Melody might be able establish some sort of link with the TARDIS. After all, it was the TARDIS and exposure to the Time Vortex that had altered her DNA in the womb, giving her Time Lord attributes. The Silence had hoped to put that hypothetical ability to use once Melody killed the Doctor; having a TARDIS in their possession would give them unparalleled power. Dr. Weatherby had enjoyed pontificating on the subject. But since Melody had always hated Weatherby and all his pokes, prods, and tests, she’d only paid minimal attention to him.

Melody felt the TARDIS’s mood grow dark and grim, and realized that it was sharing her thoughts and memories of the Silence, of Weatherby, Kovarian, Uncle Robert, Aunt Elizabeth, and the others. She could feel a rumble of anger like distant thunder and immediately bristled to the Silence’s defense. 

_They saved me. They took care of me. The Doctor made Amy and Rory abandon me. I would have died if it weren’t for the Silence and the Academy. They’re my family. The love me._

Uncle Robert and Aunt Elizabeth had, at any rate. Maybe they had been the only ones, but they _had_ loved her.

The anger melted away into a sadness so deep that it made Melody’s throat tighten. _No,_ was the only word the TARDIS conveyed, but images like an old newsreel began to play through Melody’s mind.

She saw Amy and Rory sailing off to see the Universe with the Doctor. There was no kidnapping or coercion. They were happy and excited. So was the Doctor. _All of Time and Space, everything that ever happened or ever will. Where do you want to start?_

In her mind’s eye, Melody saw them having adventures across Time and Space. She saw them setting problems right when they could and occasionally mourning when they could not. She saw them just companionably beating about the TARDIS together on quieter days. They were _friends._

_This isn’t right,_ she protested. Amy and Rory were the Doctor’s prisoners, bent to his will. That was why they’d left her behind. 

The reel kept playing, but now the story took a darker turn. The TARDIS seemed to feel almost apologetic over what she was now showing Melody. She saw Amy—a pregnant Amy—being taken by the Silence, replaced by an avatar. She saw the Doctor and Rory raising an army, dozens of hazy, indistinct figures amassing to save Amy. Melody saw them preparing to storm Demons Run. She saw the aftermath, Amy and Rory huddled together in the TARDIS’s control room grieving for their lost baby.

The whole tale of Amy and Rory, as the TARDIS played it out in her head, took only a matter of seconds. In those seconds Melody felt her life unravel, everything she had known and believed shaken to the foundations.

_Stop this,_ she told the TARDIS, panic rising in her again. Melody put every ounce of willpower she had into wrenching herself away from the TARDIS, until she finally came free with a snap.

*****

By some mercy the Doctor made it to the privacy of the control room before he doubled over in pain.

He caught himself against the wall, resting. After a moment, the wave passed. Gritting his teeth, breathing sharply through his nose, the Doctor pushed himself off the wall and kept moving. His entire body ached and the burning in his arm was growing worse, inching up toward his elbow. The Doctor staggered up the steps to the control station and dropped into his chair.

He reached into his jacket pocket, fished out River’s ring, and set it aside. It had taken him all of ten seconds to deduce that it was a communication device and location tracker, standard 52nd Century technology. River had probably worn this ring all her life. She’d had the Silence breathing down her neck even when they weren’t physically present.

The ring had come through River’s regeneration with no ill effects. That was something. The Silence would probably be coming down on their heads if they knew their prized possession had just regenerated. 

Carefully, the Doctor fished out the second item he’d pocketed; the small hypodermic spear River had stabbed him with. There was still a residue of purple-black liquid in the reservoir. It should be enough for an analysis. The Doctor didn’t know what the substance was, but given how sick he was starting to feel, it couldn’t be anything good.

Probably the sensible thing to do would have been to stay in the infirmary and ask Rory for help. But Amy and Rory needed to focus on River right now. They definitely didn’t need to be worrying over the fact that their offspring had managed to poison him. 

“All right, old girl,” the Doctor said, pulling out one of the sample drawers and depositing the spear into it. “Let’s see exactly how bad this is and figure out what we’re going to do about it.”


	3. Chapter 3

_June 4, 2000_   
_Queens, New York_

There was light moving under River’s skin. Amy watched it in fascination as she carefully held River’s hand. Rory, unsettled and desperate for something proactive to do, had retreated to the infirmary’s computer station. He was reading up on the aftereffects of Time Lord regeneration. Amy, on the other hand, hadn’t wanted to budge from River’s side now that she had her baby back.

_She’s not your baby anymore,_ Amy reminded herself. _Years-wise she’s older than you and Rory put together._ Amy knew that her perception was muddled by River’s present appearance. She wasn’t a baby, but physically she was a child. One just getting to the stroppy age maybe, but a child nonetheless. As a consequence, Amy could feel her maternal instincts kicking into high gear.

Which meant that she nearly had a heart attack when River woke up. One second River was quiet and motionless. The next second, she jolted awake with a cry and flung herself off the other side of the infirmary bed and into the floor.

“Bugger.” Amy quickly scrambled around to the other side of the bed as Rory came running. River was pushing herself up to a sitting position, her eyes rather wild. Amy squatted down at a reasonably safe distance. “River, it’s okay. You’re okay.”

Rory knelt beside Amy. “You’re fine, River. You’re on the TARDIS.”

River’s eyes stopped darting around the room and focused on the two of them. Although, _glaring_ at the two of them was probably a more accurate description. “Why do you keep calling me that?” she demanded.

_Oh, yeah. Definitely the stroppy age,_ Amy thought. 

“Why do I keep. . .? Damn. Right. _Melody,_ ” Amy said, putting emphasis on the name. “You’re safe. I mean, you got shot, but you’re safe.” 

Because on top of everything else today, there was a rogue gunman running around out there. 

River almost seemed to not hear her, squeezing her eyes closed and shaking her head. “ _He_ called me that, too,” she said, sounding a little dazed. “He called me _River Song_.”

“Melody?” Rory was using what Amy recognized as his nurse-voice. He cautiously reached out until he could rest his fingertips on the back of River’s hand. She opened her eyes again and looked at them. “We know you must be really, really confused right now. But you know who we are, don’t you?”

As Amy watched, she could see River get a hold of herself, tucking the panic away and putting on a calm, unflappable mask. Amy had seen River—grown-up River—do that before and had thought nothing of it. Now it broke her heart a little. 

“You’re Rory Williams and Amy Pond,” River said. She hesitated a moment before adding, “You’re my parents.”

“Right. So who could you be safer with than us?” Rory said.

*****

The TARDIS’s analysis wasn’t good.

“Poison of the Judas Tree,” the Doctor muttered aloud, though there was no one but the TARDIS herself to hear him. His eyes quickly scanned the report on the computer screen. “Extremely deadly. Compromises all physical systems. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. _Inhibits regeneration._ Well, that’s a bit of a problem.”

Pain swept through his body again. The Doctor braced his hands on the edge of the console and lowered his head, trying to breathe through it. These little episodes were rapidly getting worse. Finally, it eased enough for him to go back to reading.

“No known antidote. Death should occur in under an hour. Well, this is no help whatsoever.”

The Doctor fell back in his chair. “No known antidote isn’t the same as no antidote. I have no intention of dying today, so there has to be some way out of this.”

River—River in the future—hadn’t said a thing about him dying. Yes, she was smart enough not to let something like that slip even if it were true, but the Doctor knew from experience that hope could be the difference between life and death. Therefore, it was time to think positive.

He had somewhere under an hour to figure this out.

*****

By the time Melody allowed Amy and Rory to help her out of the floor, she had remembered her training and gotten a grip on herself. _Always stay in control of yourself and the situation. Project the persona you want your marks to see. You can’t give in to emotion in the field. Give nothing away._

Melody sat on the infirmary bed, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. Managing her emotions was proving difficult in a way that she hadn’t experienced in a very long time. Fear and uncertainty and confusion roiled through her, threatening to overwhelm her. Melody was a little worried that her new body had come with some faulty brain chemistry. The more rational part of her knew that the problem was for the exact opposite reason.

The last time Melody had regenerated, sixteen years ago, she had been at a low point. She’d just come off a long, solitary, extremely difficult mission that had proven to be nothing but a waste of time. She’d been slowly succumbing to radiation poisoning. And she’d returned from her deployment only to learn that Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Robert had died during her absence. At the time she’d seen only one reasonable course of action. Melody had loaded a sidearm, locked herself in her room, and hoped that once she fired her shot she’d never have to feel anything again.

Obviously, her attempted suicide had been unsuccessful, but Melody had still managed to get her wish. When she’d regenerated, all her emotions had been dulled to the point of being mildly annoying background noise. She’d been incapable of feeling much of anything. 

Now? Now that she’d regenerated again, her capacity to feel had returned. Add in a traumatic day and pubescent hormones and it was little wonder that she was having a hard time maintaining control.

Fortunately, poorly masked vulnerability was proving to be an asset at present. Amy and Rory were gently fussing over her rather than asking any hard questions. Amy had gone to find Melody some clean clothes. Rory was mixing up some sort of electrolyte concoction for her to drink. 

Melody ventured to ask him a question. “Where did the Doctor go?”

She hadn’t seen him since she’d woken up, but neither Amy nor Rory seemed upset. Which would seem to indicate they didn’t know about the poison. 

Rory looked up from his measurements. “I think he’s up in the control room. He wanted to give you space for a bit. Do you want me to call him down? He can probably help. You know, with the regeneration stuff.” When Melody quickly shook her head, he said, “All right. Well, maybe in a little bit. He _can_ help you, you know. That’s what the Doctor does.”

Melody clasped her hands tighter as anger rose up to join the other turbulent emotions swirling inside her. Amy and Rory were the Doctor’s companions, not his slaves. All this time, all the time Melody had worked and trained to fight the Doctor so that she could free Amy and Rory, and they were his friends. They were traitors.

_Are they though? Really?_ a reasonable voice in the back of her mind asked. _What did they betray, exactly?_

The Silence, on the other hand, had lied to her. They had abused her trust. They had used her. Melody had believed in them without question, and now her faith was unravelling so fast that she couldn’t even grasp the threads. What was she supposed to do now?

She started when someone dropped a tote bag stuffed with clothes into her lap.

“Here you go,” Amy said, cheerfully. “I wasn’t sure what you’d want so I grabbed a bunch of stuff from the wardrobe. I’m pretty sure I guessed the sizes right.”

Melody took the bag and tried to think of something to say. When she hesitated, Amy quickly leapt into the breach.

“Right, you need a place to change,” she said. “There’s a bathroom down this way. Come on.”

Melody had spent time in safehouses smaller than the bathroom Amy ushered her to. It came complete with a claw-footed tub and an elaborate dressing area. Finally, alone and without an audience, Melody dropped the bag, sank down onto the overstuffed ottoman, rested her aching head in her hands and tried to make some sense out of this situation.

First and foremost was the bombshell the TARDIS had dropped on her. The Doctor hadn’t forced Amy and Rory to give her up. The Silence had kidnapped her. Melody spent precisely six seconds entertaining the idea that the TARDIS was lying, but she knew in her bones that it wasn’t the case. 

The second point followed close on the heels of the first. Amy, Rory, and the Doctor had recognized her, at least they had once she’d regenerated into her new body. They had even called her by name. Well, they had called her _River Song_ , but it hardly took a genius to spot the connection to _Melody Pond._ Of all the stupid aliases, _that_ was the one she’d choose to go by?

Melody had been schooled in the convoluted logic of time travel. These signs clearly pointed to the fact that Amy, Rory, and the Doctor must have met her before at some point in Melody’s future. Of all the scenarios Melody had imagined meeting her parents under, this one had somehow never crossed her mind.

_It doesn’t matter,_ she told herself. The Doctor was dying, if he wasn’t dead already. She had completed her mission. 

Melody stood and stripped off her ill-fitting, blood-stiffened clothes. She rooted through the bag and quickly pulled on jeans, running shoes, a grey t-shirt, and a pink hoodie. When she’d finished getting dressed, Melody turned and critically examined her reflection in the full-length mirror. 

_Thirteen,_ she judged. Melody always instinctively knew how old her physical body was after a regeneration. _Thirteen bloody years old, and on my birthday, no less._ She wondered if any full Time Lords had to experience adolescence over and over again, or if this was a cosmic joke only she got to appreciate. 

Melody stepped a little closer to the mirror, getting acquainted with her new face. It was a good one, she decided after a moment or two. It was pretty, but not especially striking; she’d still be able to disappear into the background when she chose. The eyebrows and the slightly crooked mouth gave it some character. The eyes were a warm amber brown. The long, honey-colored hair would take some getting used to, but Melody decided that she liked it. The freckles were a bit of a surprise. She hadn’t had freckles since the 1940s.

It would do to be going along with.

Melody went to the door of the bathroom and eased it open a crack. She could just see Amy and Rory standing at some distance down the corridor, having a close, quiet conversation. They were distracted. Good. In a second, Melody had silently slipped out of the room and up the corridor in the opposite direction, ducking around a corner. She paused for a moment, listening for any signs of pursuit, but there were none. Breathing a quick sigh of relief, Melody started walking. It was time to find an escape route.

Her job was done. Amy and Rory clearly didn’t need her to save them. The Silence. . .well, Melody didn’t know what to do about that just now. But once she got out of the TARDIS she could blend into the Stark Expo crowds and disappear. She would figure things out from there.

*****

“What do we know about this day?” Rory said. “I mean, I know River played all this close to the vest, but what has she actually said about it?”

Rory was wracking his brain trying to remember if River had given them any clues at all. 

“Not much, I think,” Amy replied. “I mean, we know that she runs away from the Silence, spends some time on her own, and later ends up at SHIELD.”

“We know that she learned how to fly the TARDIS at some point. And we know that somewhere along the way she lost the ability to regenerate,” Rory added. 

“And we know that she’d met the Doctor once before the first time we met her.” Amy’s eyes crossed slightly, and she shook her head. Rory knew how she felt. Meeting people in the wrong time order was enough to give a person vertigo. “But I don’t think she’s said much about that day— _this_ day—at all. River’s too smart for that.”

“Unfortunately.” Rory rubbed his hands over his face. “What do we do here?”

“I don’t know. The Doctor will have some ideas.” Amy glanced back down the corridor toward the bathroom door. She frowned and glanced at her watch. “She’s been in there a while, hasn’t she?”

“Yeah, a bit,” Rory replied. “Do you think we should go check?”

“We’d better. She still looked a little wobbly.”

River didn’t respond to Amy’s knock, nor did she answer when Amy called through the door. With an encouraging nod of agreement from Rory, she opened the bathroom door to find. . .nothing. It was empty. The tote bag was on the floor and River’s blood-stained clothes were draped across the back of a chair, but there was no sign of River.

“What the. . .?” Amy checked behind the door. “Where did she go? You didn’t see her leave, did you?”

“No,” Rory sighed, “but this is River we’re talking about. You know what she’s like.”

She was a spy. She was exceptionally good at being sneaky. 

“Right.” Amy shook her head. “Come on. Let’s go find the Doctor. We need to figure out where she’s gone.”

*****

Melody tried hard to ignore the TARDIS pushing on her mind as she briskly made her way through the ship’s corridors. There had to be an exit around here somewhere.

The room ahead looked promising. It was bright, the walls looked like they’d been formed from copper, and Melody could see a large column rising through the center of the chamber. Metal staircases wound around it leading to a glass platform. Melody quickened her pace. That had to be the control deck.

She paused at the entrance of the chamber, scanning the room for threats, but it was quiet and appeared to be deserted. Sure enough, on the other side of the room, she could see doors. Not just any doors, but police call box doors. That was the way out. Melody gathered herself, raced across the control room, and threw them open. 

She slapped her hand against the brick wall on the other side of the doors. The TARDIS’s presence in the back of her mind rumbled sternly. “Let me out,” Melody demanded, but neither the TARDIS nor the brick wall budged.

Melody turned, her eyes going back to the central column and the control deck. “Two can play at this game,” she said. There had to be some way to override the TARDIS. She’d just have to work fast before someone found her. Amy and Rory had probably discovered that she was missing by now. Once they learned what she’d done to their friend the Doctor, parents or no, Melody didn’t expect they’d remain concerned about her. She’d be an enemy in their eyes. 

She took the stairs up to the control deck two at a time, freezing for a moment when she reached the top.

The Doctor was sprawled on the glass deck. He wasn’t moving. He didn’t even seem to be breathing. Melody approached him cautiously and nudged him with the toe of her shoe. There was no response. The poison must have done its work even faster than she’d anticipated. A part of Melody wanted to crow with triumph. The Doctor was dead at long last. Another part of her wanted to recoil in horror.

Her mind flashed back to the images the TARDIS had shown her, of the Doctor running with Amy and Rory, their adventures, and the people they had helped. Melody shook her head to clear it. There was no point in dwelling on it. The job was done. Regret was a waste of time. Melody stepped over the body and went to the console.

She had never been at the controls of a TARDIS before, but there was a logic to how they were laid out. All she needed to do was find an override for the door controls and—

A pair of hands grabbed Melody, yanking her away from the console and spinning her around. Melody couldn’t help a startled cry, especially when she saw that the person who was digging his fingers painfully into her arms was the Doctor himself.

The Doctor wove unsteadily, but he didn’t lose his grip. Instead he pulled Melody down with him when he fell, and they crashed to the deck together in a tangle of bruised limbs. Melody lay stunned for a moment, watching a few wisps of gold mist drift up off her body. _This is too soon. I’m not done yet. I can’t fight like this._

As it was, the Doctor recovered first. Melody swallowed back fear as he leaned over her, his face drawn with pain. He patted her shoulder.

“Sorry.” His voice sounded strained. “Didn’t mean to knock you over but, well, you poisoned me and now I’m dying. It’s a little hard to stay on my feet.”

Melody pushed herself up and tried to scramble away from him, but only succeeded in backing into the control console. The Doctor looked pained in a different way, now. “It’s all right, River.”

“That’s not my name.”

“Oh, but it is.” Somehow the Doctor managed a smile. “River Song, and you are going to be brilliant. I want you to listen to me very carefully.” He reached out and wrapped a surprisingly strong hand around her wrist. “I know what the Silence did to you. I know how they raised you. I want you to know that this isn’t your fault. Do you understand?”

Melody stared at him. “What is _wrong_ with you?”

He actually laughed, or tried to. “I’m fairly sure I don’t have time left to fully answer that question.”

Melody raised her head as she heard indistinct voices coming up one of the corridors. Amy and Rory must have discovered her escape. She tried to pull her wrist away from the Doctor, but he tightened his grip. 

“No! Don’t run. Listen,” he said. “I know you’re scared, but never run when you’re scared. Rule Seven.”

The voices were getting closer and the Doctor’s strength was clearly waning again. Melody didn’t have to fight to pull free this time. She scrambled to her feet and backed away from the Doctor. He didn’t try to get up to follow; he just watched her. If there had been any anger or reproach in his gaze, Melody almost thought it would be better than the compassion that she saw now.

The exit doors were blocked and one corridor was compromised, but that left three other routes out of the control room. And one of them eventually had to lead to a way off the TARDIS. 

Melody turned for the nearest one and ran.

*****

“You’re dying? You’re _dying,_ and you didn’t bother to tell us?”

Amy was highly tempted to wring the Doctor’s neck herself, except that it seemed a little redundant at this point. 

She and Rory had gotten the Doctor up out of the floor and onto the sofa. Rory was kneeling beside him, trying to take the Time Lord’s vitals. The Doctor was panting like he’d just done the London Marathon at a sprinting pace, but he still managed to raise his hand, forefinger pointed at the ceiling.

“Technically,” he said, “I didn’t know the dying part for certain until after I’d left the infirmary.”

“You can take your _technically_ and stuff it,” Amy said. “What do we do? There has to be something we can do.”

Clearly the Doctor had some ideas, because he’d directed Rory to bring a whole crateful of stuff up for the infirmary, a mixture of drugs and equipment. Enough to slow the poison down, according to the Doctor, possibly to the point of stalling it completely.

“You need to go find River.” The Doctor levered himself up and into a sitting position over Rory’s objections. “She ran off into the TARDIS. She could be anywhere, and she’s still in the final stages of regeneration. It’s a huge strain physically, not to mention mentally and emotionally. This isn’t good for her.”

Only the Doctor, Amy thought, could be literally dying and still be more concerned about the person who had poisoned him than himself. But then again, if his priorities were skewed than so were Amy’s, because she wanted nothing more than to go find River and make sure she was safe, and she’d be surprised if Rory didn’t feel the same. She might not be their baby anymore, but she did need help.

Rory’s eyes strayed to the TARDIS doors and the brick wall. “Why did the TARDIS lock her in?”

“I suspect she’s trying to keep River from doing anything rash,” the Doctor said.

“What, more rash than trying to kill you?” Amy didn’t wait for an answer. “All right, how are we supposed to find her?”

The Doctor opened his mouth to answer, paused, and then seemed to deflate. “I honestly have no idea. If the TARDIS is keeping her contained, she may help you. She could make you paths cross, as it were. Just go, both of you. Between the two of you, you’ll think of something.”

“No, not two,” Amy said. “I’ll go look for River. Rory’s going to stay here and keep you alive until we figure out a way to fix you. Right, Rory?”

Rory nodded and raised his voice over the Doctor’s objections. “You know she’s right, Doctor. Now, your nurse is in. Tell me which of these things I should start with.” He looked back at Amy. “Go on. Find her. Be careful.”

“I will.”

Leaving her boys in the control room, Amy set off into the TARDIS.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said four chapters in four days, but Day #4 is a Monday. Posting a chapter in the morning while simultaneously getting ready for work and keeping the cat off the laptop is a bit of a challenge, so I’m going to go ahead and throw it out there. (And this gives folks a Sunday afternoon to read it.) I hope you don’t mind getting the conclusion a little early. Happy reading!

_June 4, 2000_  
_Queens, New York_

That TARDIS seemed to go on forever.

_That’s because it_ does _go on forever_ , Melody thought in disgust as she stopped to rest. _It’s infinite on the inside._

She leaned against the corridor wall, trying to catch her breath. She shouldn’t get winded this fast, but regeneration always threw her body off for a few days. A small cloud of gold vapor blew out of her mouth on every sixth or seventh pant. 

Melody looked up and down the corridor. She had run through miles of halls like this. She had wound her way through a library the size of a small town and a root cellar the size of a large utility closet. She had seen a kitchen, an indoor swimming pool, a greenhouse, a portrait gallery, a boiler room, multiple bedrooms and storerooms, and a chamber full of nothing but snow globes. She had been opening doors at random hoping that one might point to an exit. Or an escape hatch. Something. She had to get out.

The thought bubbled up, unbidden and unwelcome: _And then what?_

She had accomplished her mission. The Doctor was as good as dead. The one thing she had been raised and trained to do was done. She could go back to the Silence and they’d hail her as a hero. Or maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe now that they’d gotten what they wanted, they’d have no further use for her. Maybe Madame Kovarian would cast her out or just give her to Dr. Weatherby to use as a lab rat. 

Given what the TARDIS had shown her, Melody knew that she couldn’t rule out that possibility. They had lied to her about everything else. Sorting through her new brain and emotions was getting a little easier and one thought rose above the others: She didn’t _have_ to go back. She could just walk away. Kovarian didn’t know she’d regenerated. She had a new face, resources, and the skills required to go underground. It would mean being totally alone though, and that was a daunting thought. 

Melody leaned her head back against the wall. Maybe it was all moot. She might never find a way out of here. She might wander the halls of the TARDIS like a ghost for the rest of her life. 

A faint sound from down the corridor made her tense, alert. Someone was following her. 

Melody pushed herself off the wall and kept running.

*****

Amy was getting a stitch in her side. Running with the Doctor had always required a good bit of literal running, but this was ridiculous.

“River,” Amy said aloud as she jogged along. “When I find you, you are so grounded, young lady.”

She didn’t even know if she was on the right track. She was basically following her nose and hoping that the TARDIS would steer her in River’s direction. Amy had seen portions of the TARDIS that she had never set eyes on before during this trek. Once or twice she had been sure she’d seen movement in the distance up ahead, a small figure in pink and a flash of golden-brown hair. 

So she pressed on. River needed her.

She did pull her mobile phone out briefly and dialed Rory’s number. Her husband answered halfway through the second ring.

“Have you found her?”

“Not yet,” Amy said. “How’s the Doctor holding up?”

There was a brief pause and a background murmur of voices. “He’s okay. He’s doing better.”

Amy’s eyes narrowed. “You’re lying to me, aren’t you?”

She heard Rory sigh. “Humor him. He doesn’t want you to worry. All that stuff he had me bring up from the infirmary is doing something at any rate. He’s holding on.”

“Tell him he needs to beat it so he can help us talk some sense into our daughter.”

“I’m not sure you can cure poison with sheer willpower,” Rory said.

“But if we knew anyone who could. . .”

“It would be the Doctor.” She could hear the smile in Rory’s voice. “I’ll tell him, and I’ll keep him going. Just find her, Amy.”

“I will.”

*****

Rory put his phone away and cast a worried eye on his patient.

The Doctor was, once again, stretched out on the sofa near the control console. It had taken a serious amount of cajoling and not a little bit of physical force to get him back there. The Doctor had always seemed to have the attitude that if he just kept moving death wouldn’t be able to catch him. Maybe he was onto something there, given the number of times he’d managed to dodge it in the past. But watching him stumble around control console, clearly in great pain, trying to find ways to locate River had just been too much. 

Besides, the Time Lord was in bad enough shape without taking a header down the control platform stairs. 

The Doctor noticed Rory watching him and glared back. “Stop that.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You’re looking at me like I’m dying.” The Doctor swung his feet to the floor and managed to work himself up to a sitting position. He didn’t seem interested in going any farther, though, so Rory allowed it. “And, all right, I am a bit, but I’ll be fine.”

“Would you care to share the source of your optimism?”

“River,” the Doctor said simply. “We know River, _our_ River. If I die here, by her hand, don’t you think there would have been some hint of it during the time we’ve spent with her in the future? She’ll fix this.”

“I don’t know,” Rory said slowly. He got what the Doctor was saying, but (leaving the muddle of tenses aside) it didn’t quite land. “I mean, she’s a spy. She knows how to not give things away. And you’re the one who’s always saying that Time can be rewritten.”

The last thing Rory wanted to do was throw cold water on a dying Time Lord, but it needed to be said. Neither of these points seemed to discourage the Doctor, though.

“I have faith in her,” he said. “Don’t you?”

Rory sighed. “Yes. I do.”

The River they knew in the future—the SHIELD agent, the hero, the Avenger—had to start somewhere. Maybe it was here.

*****

She couldn’t run anymore.

Melody’s latest sprint had led her to a dead end. She was standing in a big round chamber that looked like it had been carved from solid, dark blue stone. There was no indication whatsoever as to its purpose. All Melody cared about was that the curved wall was unbroken by any sort of doorway that would let her pass through. She cursed under her breath. She’d have to double back.

Or not. Because when Melody turned to retrace her steps, the doorway she’d entered by had disappeared. 

“No!” Melody ran back, hoping that a hatch had just closed behind her. But there was no seam, however small, to be found. The stone wall had simply closed up behind her, trapping her.

She slapped her hand against the wall, for all the good it did. “So, this is it?” she said aloud to the TARDIS. “You’re going to leave me in here until I starve to death?” She rested her forehead against the cool stone. “I can’t help him. Even if I wanted to, there’s no cure to the Judas Tree. That’s why I used it. So, if you think you can lock me in here to make me change my mind, it won’t matter.”

The TARDIS’s presence in Melody’s head was quiet, but a soft noise started to fill the chamber behind her. Eyes closed, brow still resting against the stone, Melody frowned as it grew louder. It wasn’t mechanical. It sounded like a murmur of voices and the tap and clink of dishes and cutlery, for all the world like a dinner party. 

Melody turned and her eyes went wide. 

The bare blue chamber was no longer empty. In fact, it looked like the set from a play had been dropped into the middle of it. There were people sitting around a long dining table, laughing and chatting. Melody took a cautious step forward, but the people took no notice of her. Of course, they weren’t really people. This must be a projection of some sort, and clearly the TARDIS was responsible for it. But why? Why would the TARDIS want to show her this?

Her eyes scanned the people. There were men and women of various ages, but no one that she recognized. Melody slowly approached the tableau trying to figure out what she was meant to be seeing.

A woman with light brown hair and wearing a red sweater rose from the table. She was laughing at something one of the others had said. “Sit still. I’ll get them,” she said. “I need to stretch. Besides, if anyone should get a break during dinner, it’s the cook.”

Then something extremely curious happened. The woman stopped a few feet away from Melody and looked directly at her.

It was highly disconcerting. This woman, unlike the other people here, _did_ look familiar. Melody thought frantically, tying to figure out where she had seen the woman before. It actually took her several moments to work it out, but then she and that face were very newly acquainted. In fact, she had only seen it once before, this very day in a mirror. She was looking at herself, only not quite herself. Melody’s current outer form was that of an adolescent. This projected version of herself was a grown woman. And that wasn’t the most notable difference. _She looks happy,_ Melody thought. Her eyes were bright, her mouth curved in a crooked smile, and she held herself with ease and confidence. Melody felt a pang of envy at the sight of her. 

As she watched, one of the men from the table came to join the woman. This one had sandy hair and a pleasant face with snubbed features and green eyes. He beamed as he wrapped an arm around the waist of Melody’s double and kissed her on the cheek. “You know, I could kind of get used to this big, crazy family holiday stuff,” he said.

Then the strange tableau vanished and the entire room went dark.

*****

Amy was starting to think she’d never find River when she passed through a doorway into a large, empty round chamber, and there she was. She had planned to approach slowly (not that she really thought River would hurt her, but River was having rather a mad day). But when she saw River in the chamber, sitting in middle the floor with her knees pulled up to her chest and her head down, Amy threw caution to the wind and ran in.

“Hey. It’s okay.” Amy dropped to her knees, wrapped her arms around River, and pulled her close. “It’s all right, River. I’ve got you.”

Amy felt River tense, though she didn’t try to pull away. After a moment or two she raised her head. Amy had thought that she’d been crying, but River’s eyes were dry. The look on her pale face, though, was somehow worse. Amy had never seen someone look so lost. 

“River, say something.” Amy tried not to sound too anxious.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” River said dully.

“I know.” Amy pushed River’s hair out of her face. “I know, and I am so sorry.”

River frowned and looked up at her. “Why are you sorry?”

“Because this is all my fault.” Amy felt the guilt that had been sitting in her heart ever since Demons Run rise up into her throat. “The Silence. . .I let them take you away from me. They took you right out of my arms and I couldn’t do anything to stop them, and I’m sorry.”

Amy hadn’t been able to bear voicing any of this aloud, even to Rory. Because she knew what Rory would say: that of course it wasn’t her fault. He would have made all the logical arguments for why it wasn’t her fault, and Amy hadn’t wanted to hear it. She already knew all the logical arguments, and it still didn’t make her feel any better. Mothers were supposed to protect their children, weren’t they? That was a basic requirement. Amy had failed that one right out of the gate.

“It wasn’t as if they gave you a choice.” River pulled away from Amy a little bit. Her eyes were cast down now, focused on her hands which were clenched in her lap. “The TARDIS has been showing me things. She keeps showing me things.” Amy saw her eyes dart around the chamber for a second and she wondered what she had missed walking in on. “The Silence told me that the Doctor made you give me up. I know that’s not true. They took me. It wasn’t your fault.”

Amy swallowed. She hadn’t quite realized how badly she wanted to hear that from the person in this equation who mattered the most.

She jumped slightly when her mobile buzzed. Amy pulled out her phone, answering while at the same time resting a hand on River’s shoulder so that she couldn’t disappear again. “Rory?” she said. “I found her. She’s okay.”

There was a quiet moment before Rory replied, sounding altogether too calm. “Amy, he’s gone.”

*****

Even in death, the Doctor had the power to frighten Melody.

It wasn’t so much his corpse, though that was disconcerting enough. He was laid out, still and unmoving, on the sofa next to the control console. Melody kept her distance. She was only just starting to realize how thoroughly the Silence had done their work if a lifeless Time Lord could still make her insides clench with fear. 

But what truly frightened her was seeing how devastated Amy and Rory were at losing their friend. 

And yet there was no anger directed her way, no accusatory looks. Rory even worked up a smile and wrapped one arm around her briefly when she and Amy climbed to the top of the control deck. Melody remained at the top of the stairs, giving them space. She couldn’t join Amy and Rory in their mourning. Beyond the fact that it would have been awkward given that she had been the one who had killed the Doctor, she still wasn’t convinced that the universe wasn’t safer and better off without him.

The thing that made her waver was Amy and Rory. Despite all the lies it turned out that her life had been spun on, everything that Melody had hoped of her parents was true. They were good. They were kind. They seemed determined to care about her in spite of what she had done. And that sparked off an idea in Melody’s head. 

She looked down at her hand and clenched a fist, watching the gold regenerative energy drift off her skin. It was a crazy idea. It was also probably a very bad idea for at least a dozen reasons, and there was a strong possibility that it wouldn’t work. Though if it did work it would probably be best not to try it inside the TARDIS, or in a spot directly under one of the busiest sections of the Stark Expo.

Melody was at the controls and had fired up the TARDIS’s engines before Amy and Rory noticed her.

“Riv—Melody?” Amy scrambled up out of the floor by the Doctor’s bedside. “What are you doing?”

Melody adjusted the navigation controls, picking a nearby spot in Queens that looked safely deserted. She had no business knowing how to pilot a TARDIS, yet the skill seemed to come almost instinctively, nudged and encouraged along by the TARDIS herself.

“Trust me,” Melody said. She couldn’t quite meet Amy’s and Rory’s eyes. “I know I don’t deserve it, but trust me.”

She pulled the lever and the TARDIS took flight.

*****

River landed the TARDIS inside a dusty warehouse and directed Rory to carry the Doctor’s body out and lay him in the floor. Rory found himself obeying without question; River issued her orders in the brisk, business-like tone that he knew very well from the slightly future version of his daughter.

“But what are you going to do?” Amy asked River as Rory gently settled the Doctor on the ground.

“Something against my better judgement,” River replied, kneeling down beside the Time Lord’s body. She looked up at Amy and Rory, and to Rory’s eyes she seemed to be equal parts determined and uncertain. “Just tell me one thing. The Doctor. Is he worth it?”

Worth whatever she was about to do, or worth everything that had led them to this point? Either way, Rory didn’t know how to answer, so he left it to Amy.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, he is.”

River nodded, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Rory’s eyes widened as gold light bloomed under her skin, glowing brighter and brighter. “River. . .”

“Both of you get back inside the TARDIS.” River opened her eyes. They looked like pools of fire. “Now. I’m not sure how this is going to work.”

Rory grabbed Amy’s arm and pulled her through the TARDIS doors. The last thing Rory saw before slamming the door closed was River resting her hands over the Doctor’s hearts.

*****

There was no reason to think this could actually work. If it did work, there was no reason to think she’d live through it.

Maybe that was no more than what she deserved, Melody thought. If Amy’s faith and the TARDIS’s visions were to be believed, she had killed one of the best men in the Universe. On the other hand, if he were truly a monster, she was about to bring him back to life, or try to. The Silence may have lied about a lot of things, but that didn’t mean that the Doctor wasn’t dangerous. If this worked and she survived it, he might finish her off himself.

“I really hope Amy’s the one who’s right about you,” she said.

She laid her hands over the Doctor’s hearts, mustered every speck of energy she had, and pushed it outward.

*****

Amy gripped Rory’s hand as flames erupted outside of the TARDIS’s small, high windows. They licked at the windows for a long, breathless moment. Amy even fancied that she could hear them roaring. Then in the space of a second they disappeared, the windows went dark, and everything went quiet.

Amy and Rory looked at each other. “Do you think--”

Rory was interrupted by loud banging on the TARDIS doors. Amy jumped forward and yanked them open.

“Oh, my God.”

The Doctor stood on the threshold, alive and breathing, if looking a little dazed. He was holding River in his arms. She was pale and looked limp as a rag doll. Amy felt her heart jump into her throat.

“It’s all right. She’s alive,” the Doctor said. “Which, as it turns out, makes two of us.”

Rory quickly took River from the Doctor and carried her up to the control platform. Amy and the Doctor followed; Amy pulled the Doctor’s arm over her shoulders and helped him along. He didn’t really seem to need it, but it made Amy feel better and her Raggedy Man didn’t object.

Rory laid River on the sofa and quickly shucked off his jacket, draping it over her. He felt for her pulse while Amy sat the Doctor down in the chair. “What did she do?” she asked.

The Doctor raised a slightly exasperated eyebrow at her. Amy would have swatted him if she wasn’t so relieved to see him alive. “I was rather dead, so I can’t say in great detail, but I can make an educated guess. She transferred her regenerative energy to me. Relit the pilot light, as it were. Brought me back.” He frowned a little as he looked at River. “It makes sense.”

“It does?” Rory asked, resting the back of his hand on River’s forehead.

“River told me that she’d given up her ability to regenerate. She wouldn’t tell me how. Spoilers. This was it. She did it for me.”

Amy drifted across the short distance to join Rory next to River. Her daughter looked impossibly young, tucked under Rory’s jacket. “It think she might have done it a bit for herself, too.” _And good for you, my brave girl._ “This means she’s free now, doesn’t it? She doesn’t belong to the Silence anymore.”

“I do believe that’s the case,” the Doctor replied. “They don’t know she’s regenerated, so they don’t know her face. And I have this.” The Doctor reached into his jacket pocket and fished out the ring he’d taken off River earlier. “A little work with the sonic and the Silence will think that she properly died facing me down. I’ll leave it in a spot easy for them to find. That leaves only one thing for us to do.”

“What’s that?” Rory asked.

“We need to take her far away from here.”

*****

_1 Hour Later. . ._  
 _Queens, New York_

Nick Fury surveyed the charred interior of the warehouse, ignoring the curious and wary looks he was getting from a few members of SHIELD’s Science Division. They were probably wondering why the Director had decided to come out here in person. It was clearly working their nerves, having him here.

He hadn’t asked for a report yet; he didn’t need one to know that the scientists were baffled as to the source and nature of the massive surge of unidentifiable energy that had blasted through this building an hour ago. SHIELD’s scanners had lit up like the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. And since Queens was pretty much in SHIELD HQ’s backyard, the response had been incredibly swift.

The irony was that Fury could have told them exactly what had happened. He wasn’t going to, obviously. This mysterious incident was destined to remain unsolved. But he could have.

Fury stepped out of the warehouse, walking several yards away before pulling out his phone. He thumbed through his contacts until he reached _Minister_ and dialed.

“It’s happened,” he said without preamble when she answered. “Melody Pond is dead. River Song is on the board.”

There wasn’t so much as a beat of surprised silence, but then former Director Meg Downing was a hard one to catch off guard. “I’ll meet you at the penthouse this evening. Six o’clock.”

Of course, Downing was in town when this went down. Fury had no doubt that was deliberate.

“Are you going to be able to slip away from Stark?” he asked.

“I’m fairly certain Anthony has other plans for the evening,” Downing replied. Fury grinned. He could practically hear her rolling her eyes. “I’ll see you in a few hours, Nicholas.”

Fury’s penthouse apartment was on the top floor of SHIELD’s downtown office building. Highly secure and strategically situated, it had been Downing’s apartment for decades. Fury had inherited it along with the job of Director when she’d retired. He still generally preferred to stay in his quarters out on the base, in the heart of things, but the penthouse definitely had its advantages, for example, as a place for off-the-books meetings.

It was a quarter past six when Fury arrived, his delay due mostly to the large bag of food from Russ & Daughters he’d stopped for on his way. He didn’t sweat the tardiness. Downing had the access code, and Fury was sure she’d make herself at home, and indeed she had. 

What he did not expect was to walk in and find her sitting at the kitchen table cleaning a handgun.

“Ma’am?” Fury dropped the bag on the counter. “Is there something you’d like to fill me in on?”

The old woman looked up with a slightly mischievous smile. “So many things, Nicholas. Don’t worry, you’ll get the debrief. Did you get the whitefish?”

“And the egg salad, and chocolate babka, and lox and bagels with all the trimmings.”

“I knew there was a reason I picked you to be my protégé. Let’s eat. I’m starving.”

Still, Fury noticed that while he dove in with gusto, Downing picked around at her food. On the other hand, she was the one doing most of the talking. 

“Let me get this straight,” Fury said after several minutes, setting down his sandwich. “ _You_ killed Melody Pond.”

In the tunnel. With the Walther 9mm.

“Melody Pond had to die,” Downing said, reaching for her glass of scotch, “so that River Song could be born. You know how this works.”

Fury waved off the comment. Yes, he’d been thoroughly educated on how Time Lord regeneration worked. That wasn’t what concerned him here.

“So, in order to draw out Melody Pond, the ruthless international assassin, you took out a hit on _yourself?”_

“It seemed to be the most efficient way.”

“Efficient my ass.” Fury shook his head. “You should had told me what you had planned. I could have had agents on the ground to back you up in case things went sideways.”

“That’s precisely why I didn’t tell you,” Downing said. “The last thing I needed was half a dozen conscientious agents breathing down my neck. It would have tipped her off. Besides, they asked me to handle this personally.” 

Downing reached into her purse and pulled out an envelope. There was a date typed on it: April 4, 2000. Fury knew that she would have opened it precisely on that date, not a day before and not a day after. Downing took the envelopes very seriously and had taught him to do the same. She lay the envelope on the table, patted it fondly, and then slid it over to Fury. He accepted the unspoken invitation and extracted the short, typed letter.

“You know, I trust your friends,” he said as he scanned the message. “Well, I trust that you trust them.” He refolded the letter and put it back in the envelope. “But it would be nice to know what all of this is leading to.”

“We’ll know in time,” Downing said. “If there’s one thing we can be certain of, Nicholas, it’s that.”

*****

_12 hours later_  
 _St. Anne’s Hospital_  
 _London, England_

It took a bit of slight of hand to get River admitted to the hospital as an anonymous patient without anyone alerting the authorities. But between the Doctor’s psychic paper and Rory’s inside knowledge of how the system worked, they managed without too many problems. 

It might have been better to take River to the Sisters of Plentitude, but that could alert the Silence that their Chosen One wasn’t so dead after all. The Doctor hadn’t wanted to risk it. What River had done to bring him back had left her body in shock and exhausted, nothing that couldn’t be dealt with here. She just needed time and a safe place to recover.

_Now comes the hard part,_ the Doctor thought. They had to say good-bye.

Amy and Rory had barely gone ten feet from River since they’d gotten her settled in the hospital bed. Amy sat on the edge of the bed while Rory occupied the chair alongside it. They both looked up when the Doctor cleared his throat.

“It’s time,” he said.

The only thing they’d accomplish by prolonging their stay would be to make leaving harder. As the Doctor expected, Amy was resistant.

“We’re just supposed to leave her here to fend for herself?” she said. “All alone, in hospital? She’s a _kid.”_

“She _looks_ like a kid,” Rory said tiredly. “We know she’s not.”

Amy just shook her head and glared at them both. “Why? Why do we have to leave her? We don’t have to. We could take her with us. We could--”

“We can’t,” the Doctor said. He knew Amy knew that, and his hearts ached for her. “Amy, we can’t. You know she’d never forgive us if we did that.”

_Who wrote Beethoven’s 5th?_ It was a paradox, to be sure. They were leaving River here now because River in the future had told them to. Still, the fact that it was a paradox didn’t mean that the wish shouldn’t be honored. River had her life, and it wasn’t for them to undo it even with the best of intentions. 

The Doctor watched as Amy swallowed back her next argument and nodded. She leaned over, kissed River on the cheek, and quickly left the room. Rory got out of his chair, bent down to kiss River on the temple, and then went to follow his wife. He gave the Doctor a quizzical look.

“I’m right behind you,” the Doctor said.

Once he was alone in the room the Doctor sat down in Amy’s spot on the bed beside River. River Song, the woman who killed the Doctor and the woman who had saved him. She appeared to be deeply asleep, but the Doctor had a notion that she wasn’t totally unaware of her surroundings. At least he hoped she wasn’t.

The Doctor rested one gentle hand on River’s head and bent low over her ear. He chose his words with care. “There’s going to come a time,” he said, “when you’ll think that you’re finished. When you’ll think your life is over. That will be just the beginning.” He stroked his hand over her hair before he straightened up. “I’ll see you in the future, River.”

Amy and Rory were waiting for him in the hallway. “What’s going to happen to her now?” Rory asked.

They knew what was going to happen from here, of course. They knew River’s story beyond this point, but the Doctor rather thought they all needed to hear it aloud.

“She’ll make her own way from here with the skills the Silence taught her,” the Doctor said. “It will be hard and no doubt she’ll get into a good deal of trouble. And in about five years, SHIELD will decide that she needs to die, and they’ll send Agent Barton to kill her. He’ll make a different call instead. She’ll be all right.” The Doctor checked his watch, purely for show. “In fact, she’s expecting us for dinner. We should go.”

This loop in Time was closed. It was time to move forward.

*****

_November 22, 2012_  
 _Thanksgiving Day_  
 _Stark Mansion, Long Island, New York_

River had joined Clint at the sink, drying dishes while he washed. He had just handed her a clean mixing bowl when he heard the TARDIS land in the hallway outside the kitchen.

“Oh, good. They’re here,” River said, quickly setting aside the bowl and her towel. 

She took a second to straighten her ponytail before she headed for the kitchen door. Probably no one but Clint would be able to tell that she was nervous. This was the first time River had seen her parents in person since right after Demons Run. River was halfway to the kitchen door when Amy came through it. River stopped at a respectful distance.

“Amy, hi. I so glad you all could—um. Okay,” River said as Amy marched right through that distance, wrapped her arms around River and hugged her tight. Clint watched as River carefully hugged her back. “Amy are you all right?” she asked.

Amy pulled back and Clint could see that she was teary-eyed. “I’m so sorry we left you,” she said.

“You’re sorry you. . .” River’s eyes widened. “You went to Queens, didn’t you?” Amy nodded in response.

Of course, Clint knew what Queens meant. River had told him and Phil all about it, what she could remember, anyway. River admitted to having some gaps in her memory from that day. It turned out that expelling all your regenerative energy was like any other physical trauma. It made the memories from a few hours prior a little spotty. But she definitely remembered the main points.

Clint quietly edged over to the island where Phil and Valerie were. They both looked to him with curiosity and slight concern. Phil raised an eyebrow, which Clint knew meant, _Do we need to leave them alone?_ Before Clint could take a stab at the answer, Rory and the Doctor entered the kitchen as well. So apparently this wasn’t going to be a private heart-to-heart.

Also, River sure didn’t seem to care who was watching.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Amy, it’s okay. I know why you left. You did the right thing.”

Amy smiled and hugged her again. Clint saw Rory hesitate for half a moment before he threw English reserve to the wind and wrapped his arms around both the women. He heard River laugh from somewhere under the pile of unrestrained affection.

Out of the corner of his eye, Clint saw Valerie swipe at her eyes and Phil hand her a napkin. The Doctor was standing a bit apart from the others. He caught Clint’s eye and beamed.

The touching moment was cut short by a draft, the tramp of loud feet, and Stark’s voice. “Hey, TARDIS. Jarvis will be happy to see his girlfriend. So, where is everybody?” he asked right before the entire amateur football team streamed into the kitchen.

There was a long beat of silence before Banner said, “I get the feeling we missed something.” 

This time the entire Pond family dissolved into laughter.

*****

“So, you never found out who actually shot you in the first place?” Steve asked.

Understandably, River’s new teammates had been curious about the little scene they’d burst in on. With her blessing, Amy and Rory had told their story over dinner, with River filling in bits here and there from her side.

“Never,” River replied. “It could have been someone that I’d crossed who happened to be in the right place at the right time. It could have been an incompetent would-be mugger who panicked. It wound up being a secondary concern, strange as it feels to say that.”

“Well, that’s life,” Director Downing said over her glass of wine. “We all go to our graves with an unsolved mystery or two.”

“Sort of like your psychic paper message,” Stark added. “You never found out who sent that either, did you?”

“No,” the Doctor said, helping himself to another scoop of squash. “Though honestly I don’t mind. Life would be dull if I figured everything out right away.”

“To never leading a dull life,” Thor said, raising his own wine glass.

The others followed suit. “Though I don’t think anyone here is in danger of that,” Phil added.

“I’m game for anything that doesn’t involve being drafted for an alien stress test again,” Valerie said. “Speaking of unsolved mysteries.”

“God, yes,” Banner agreed.

“And on that note,” Valerie added. “I think we need those extra bottles of wine after all.”

“Sit still. I’ll get them,” River said, getting up and waving Valerie back into her seat. “I need to stretch. Besides,” she called over her shoulder, “if anyone should get a break during dinner, it’s the cook.”

She turned toward the kitchen and then paused as a little grey area of memory suddenly lit up in color, and River remembered. Running through the TARDIS. A big blue chamber. Seeing herself grown, whole, and happy.

River looked out into the hallway, seeing the TARDIS sitting there between the dining room and the kitchen, and smiled. Oh, she was good. The TARDIS was very, very good.

River’s pause was only for a split second, not long enough for anyone to notice except for Clint who had followed her from the table. He wrapped an arm around her waist and kissed her on the cheek. “You know, I could kind of get used to this big, crazy family holiday stuff,” he said. Then he frowned. “Hey, are you okay? You have kind of a funny look on your face.”

She opened her mouth to answer, but only managed to laugh and shake her head. She patted Clint’s hand. “I’ll tell you later,” she promised.

*****

_June 9, 2000_  
 _On the train from London Kings Cross to Edinburgh_

River Song sat alone at the back of the carriage by a window, watching the countryside go by.

River Song, not Melody Pond. River had made that decision during the three days she’s spent at St. Anne’s. It had taken that long for her strength to return enough for her to sneak out of the place, stealing enough cash on the way to get her out of town. She was not going back to the Silence. She had a new life, a new face, and a new name. She’d leave Melody Pond behind along with the Silence and its lies and its obsessive quest. She was completely on her own.

It was a little terrifying. For a short time, during a few half-conscious moments in hospital, she’d irrationally hoped that Amy and Rory might take her with them. They hadn’t, of course. They had left her behind. River sternly told herself that it was a waste of time to feel hurt. She wasn’t _actually_ a child. She didn’t need anyone to hold her hand.

She could take care of herself. She had resources. She’d been putting money away for decades, stashed all over the world. She had a brain and skills and contacts. All she needed to do now was figure out her next move. 

Her new adolescent appearance was a slight complication. It was difficult for a thirteen-year-old girl to move about independently in this day and age, and River didn’t fancy the idea of foster care or living on the streets. Fortunately, there was an easy work-around. It was hardly unheard of for students at a certain class of British boarding schools to arrive for term without their parents in tow. River knew of one or two schools that would fit the bill. She’d lay low get her ducks in a row over the summer and then enroll herself in one as a student. It would no doubt be tedious, but it would be safe. From there she could work out her next steps.

That was going to take time. For the first time in her life, River didn’t know where her path was going to lead. That was why she was heading north. She would go back home to Scotland, back to where it all began.

And then she’d start again.

_End_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew. This was a hard one to write, for a number of reasons. But River is off on the right path now.
> 
> Coming soon: The Wedding of River Song. Which is pretty much what it says on the tin. I needed something more on the fluffy side after The Queens Sacrifice. You are all invited. There will be fun! There will be schmoop! There will be no discernable plot whatsoever!


End file.
